Do you ever get the feeling “they” are talking about you when you’re not listening?

Well, if you’re a brand, and you have customers, you’re not being paranoid. They are talking about you. On Facebook, on blog comment threads, on Yelp reviews, on Meerkat streams – on platforms that suddenly become popular while you’re still building a presence on the last one – customers are interacting with one another and having their say.

A lot has been written already about how threatening this can feel for companies used to a one-way conversation in their marketing. But smart companies are seeing all this social interaction as an opportunity to learn, to engage, to build brand loyalty and, most interestingly, to innovate.